Advance birthday gift for my dad - Ibanez PCBE12MH acoustic bass. He's 68 this year & still performs at weddings occasionally. At this age, prolonged standing with a solid body bass is taxing on the back so this was the least I could do for him.
Same old story; dry fretboard. That wood there isn't rosewood despite looking very convincing. It's nandu, which is a Southeast Asian substitute for rosewood very similar in colour & open grain characteristic. However, be informed that it is listed as vulnerable under certain tropical forest watch lists. Whatever the case, it needed re-cnditioning & that's a done deal.
This particular model was plagued by sharp fret edges for the entire neck length. Being accustomed to this anomaly, it's something I could confidently remedy with delicate filing. It seems that someone at the Chinese factory left a marker stain there, a permanent one & hoped the black coated strings (factory default) would somehow mask the blunder. This shows how much QC took place & why the world continues to think poorly of instruments crafted there.
Another prominent lack of manufacturing pride is that rough edge at the sound hole which stretched for about half the circumference. We cannot rule out the fact that the area was defiled by tools while they had the electronics fixed to the internals of the instrument. Nobody attended to it thereafter because the PF series of Ibanez acoustics are the entry-level lot where such oversights might be deemed as the norm.
All in all, this is a feeble product that got away from the QC eyes if there were any vigilance there to begin with.
